As if one supra-human sense – echolocation – was not enough, it turns out that bats have another. Like birds, they can navigate by sensing Earth’s magnetic field. The only other mammals known to do this are naked mole rats and Siberian hamsters.
Ten big brown bats (Eptesicus fuscus) were exposed to artificial magnetic fields that twisted their perception of magnetic north by 90 degrees, either to the east or the west. The bats were then released 20 kilometres north of their usual roost, along with five control bats that had not been exposed to magnetic fields. The control bats soon…
